The number of homeschoolers grew by nearly twenty percent between 2007 and 20012. Not surprisingly, then, there has been increased attention on homeschooling from legislatures around the country. What is the appropriate role of the state in the lives of homeschoolers? Do I as a parent have the right to call all the shots for my own children? Do we as a citizenry have some role to play in the education of all children? As the country increases testing demands, do we… Read more

When asked to choose between saving the Union and ending slavery, George Washington chose the Union. Abraham Lincoln, asked to make the same choice, wrote, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. … What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union.” It’s not that these men didn’t… Read more

As we were watching an episode of We Shall Remain, the PBS series about Native Americans, Zach said, “I just can’t see anything else where the Americans are the bad guys.” Ezra replied, “Yeah, it’s freakin’ me out.” It’s not that we hadn’t studied awful aspects of American history before. We studied the role of slavery at Jamestown and other early colonies. When we studied the American Revolution, we had to reconcile our love of George Washington with his horrific… Read more

We’ve been home almost a week, and the intensity of what we experienced in Ghana is finally hitting me. I finished a short video of our trip last night, and I watched it this morning with our homeschool group. It’s been two weeks since we visited the slave castles, and I shed my first tears today. It’s not only the horror that I’ve been slow to process. The beauty of the natural world, the graciousness of our Ghanian hosts, sitting… Read more

There is a menancing aspect to teaching your children that they are blessed because they are healthy and have money. Feeling blessed in the face of others’ suffering often serves to distance us from rather than connect us to others. We are blessed; they are not. Read more

I’m sitting in a hostel lobby in Accra, Ghana, trying to figure out what to say. It shouldn’t be hard, really. We’re on an extreme field trip of sorts – here to see the Asante king in a parade next week, after having studied the Asante kingdom with our homeschool group last semester. This is my first time in sub-Saharan Africa; and this is Jeff’s and the children’s first time anywhere in Africa. We just came back from visiting two… Read more